Correct, but it's the same for PC too. All the games I own cost $50/$60 a pop. And look at COD, they're charging for the "stimulus packages" for PCs too. And for the hardware consoles are a better deal. Trust me, I was a die-heart PC gamer for the longest time (heck, I still don't own any real consoles), but PC gaming is slowly dying, just look at all the games that are being ported to PC instead of the other way around.
but look at the uproar that caused when they charged for DLC. Bare in mind I have links with several CoD clans, I know, out of maybe ~150 people that own MW2, 2 that bought the DLC.
You look at near every other PC game, and DLC is free, and I don't mean expansions, I mean DLC. Looking through my steam game list now:
All Valve games (of which I have many)
CoD4
CoD:WaW
Red Orchestra
Battlefield 2
BC2
GoW (non-steam game)
all free DLC. The only game in that list that I would have to pay for, and won't pay for, DLC, is Modern Warfare 2, and it is because Activision is greedy.
Now, that is very far off topic, I know, my appologies to OP for that. However, I don't know how prices are in US, but over here, Xbox and PS3 games, when they come out are all either £40 or £50. A PC game is always, unless it is Modern Warfare 2, £30 or less. Over time, a PC game is £30 in total, over time, an Xbox game can be £70+ thanks to DLC payments. So, let us say you have 10 games, with all DLC on both PC and console, that is on a PC, £300 for games. On a console, that is £700 for games. Put in the price of the console, it is roughly equal to what a PC would cost to be able to run those games well
you could then say, what about upgrades, let's assume over 1 year, you buy another 5 games, plus DLC, that is £150 for PC, £350 for console. £200 is so much more than required to keep up to date.
And I know those figures aren't anywhere near real world because you don't HAVE to buy DLC, and you won't necessarily always get games when they are still full price, but the difference, over time, is negligable really, so that can't really be factored in at all. Even if you payed 20% extra for a PC, you have to remember that you get increased functionality. It was big news when Xbox started doing live streaming of TV, even though PCs had been doing it for years. Same goes for when internet came out on the wii, when HD movies were available, when the PS2 could play DVDs, when you could start downloading games on demand. The PC is always the first, and always does it much more easily than a console can. I am on the internet, listening to music, downloading a game, all at once. A console can do that, yes, however it can do it nowhere near as well or as easily as a PC can. You can't do half as much of the stuff that you can on a PC on a console, so a little extra to be able to do all that seems reasonable to me. Most people have an "everyday" computer in their homes anyway, that if they had made a gaming PC rather than a console, would have cose the same as having both the PC and console.
Like tlarkin says, there are pros and cons to each. I have an xbox, wii and gaming PC. I don't use my wii so much any more, but my xbox I do and my PC I do. I can understand why consoles are so popular, I can understand why people prefer PC gaming, it is preference, depends on the game and several other things, but PC gaming is going nowhere, it isn't dieing, it isn't going to die, it is going to be here until a console can do everything as well as a PC can.
As to the cloud gaming, I can't see it working, but we will see, it may be revolutionary. I still prefer having the game on my computer though because of mods and fixing things yourself
